Quotations

Quotations are the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by (punctuated with) quotation marks.

Books of quotations are an elemental model of how culture is perpetuated, the wisdom of the trite passed on to posterity, to be added to, edited, and modified by subsequent generations.

Robert Andrews, ed. The Columbia dictionary of quotations. Columbia University Press, 1993.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author. Perhaps the next highest is, when a writer of any kind is so considerable that you go to the labor and pains of endeavoring to refute him before the public, the very doing of which is an incidental admission of his talent and power.

The man whose book is filled with quotations, has been said to creep along the shore of authors, as if he were afraid to trust himself to the free compass of reasoning. I would rather defend such authors by a different allusion, and ask whether honey is the worse for being gathered from many flowers.

There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent.

Its fall is entirely owing to itself, the seeds of death were in it from the commencement. The powers of satire and of derision, which it exercised with as little mercy as modesty, have proved, in the result, very humble powers; and after usurping an authority, the most dictatorial and audacious, a general doubt is now expressed as to the ability with which it was at one time supposed to have been conducted. Of this there certainly can be no dispute that it will be difficult to name as many volumes in the English language which afford so few quotable passages; and perhaps there can be no better proof of the original mediocrity of the contributors, whatever may have been the merit of a few occasional articles.

Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation.

Shall we not rejoice then and revel in the glorious liberty of extract, and quote to the thousandth line? Shall we not have pages like the Pyramids?

Samuel Laman Blanchard, Sketches from life (1846).

I must stop to lament, that we cannot evince an admiring gratitude towards other excellent things by a like readiness of quotation: that we cannot, for instance, quote a star that we have been watching; or a hue of sunset; or a friend's voice, and his shake of the hand (I had almost said heart); or a beautiful picture...

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Why are not more gems from our early prose writers scattered over the country by the periodicals?…But Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.

In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs by imitation.

Emerson is referring to the act of quotation in regard to the subject of "immortality", and the unreliability of second hand testimony or worse upon profound subjects; ironically, it is often taken out of proper context, and has even begun appearing on the internet as "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know" or sometimes just "I hate quotations".

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references ? Why should you ? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them.

Anatole France, quoted in Anatole France Himself - A Boswellian Record by Jean Jacques Brousson.

He that has but ever so little examined the citations of writers, cannot doubt how little credit the quotations deserve when the originals are wanting ; and consequently how much less quotations of quotations can be relied on.

The French public seem to estimate the master pieces of their favorite tragic poets chiefly by the number of fine quotable passages they supply; while their critics estimate their worth by their conformity with certain purely artificial rules.

… I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood … the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book.

I've always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better? … If you are charmed by an author, I think it's a very strange and invalid imagination that doesn't long to share it. Somebody else should read it.

The poem, although widely differing in subject from any of Mrs. Lewis' prior compositions, and far superior to any of them in general vigor, artistic skill, and assured certainty of purpose, is nevertheless easily recognizable as the production of the same mind which originated "Florence" and "The Forsaken." We perceive, throughout, the same passion, the same enthusiasm, and the same seemingly reckless abandon of thought and manner which we have already mentioned as characterizing the writer. We should have spoken also, of a fastidious yet most sensitive and almost voluptuous sense of Beauty. These are the general traits of "The Child of the Sea:" but undoubtedly the chief value of the poem, to ordinary readers, will be found to lie in the aggregation of its imaginative passages—its quotable points.

My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw – which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker.

An analagous process I shall call Churchillian Drift...Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill. All humorous remarks obviously made by a female originated, of course, with Dorothy Parker. All quotations in translation, on the other hand, should be attributed to Goethe (with "I think" obligatory).

It seems simple: a quotation is a repetition of a saying : But leading language philosophers — Frege, Tarski, Geach, Quine, Searle — recognized that quotations are trouble. Donald Davidson was taught that quotation is “a somewhat shady device” and an “invitation to sin.”

In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language.

Quotation might “appear trivial” yet also be “an easy entrance to the labyrinth” of other heady problems: propositional attitudes, explicit performatives, and picture theories of reference

Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, (2010), p. 4.

Always to verify your references.

Rev. Dr. Routh, to Dean Burgon. Nov. 29, 1847. See Very Rev. John Burgon, Lives of Twenty Good Men. "Reference" in ed. of 1891; "quotation" in earlier ed; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 653-54.

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

A forward critic often dupes us
With sham quotations peri hupsos,
And if we have not read Longinus,
Will magisterially outshine us.
Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye,
Procure the book for love or money,
Translated from Boileau's translation,
And quote quotation on quotation.

It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.

Some great writers produce a profound effect by their work as a whole, but are not readily quotable; others have the gift of condensing their meaning into a striking phrase. The conscious and deliberate literary artist will generally be found to belong to the latter class. Pope, for example, is the most quotable writer in English after Shakespeare. Stevenson stands intermediate. On the whole, he rather diffuses his meaning, and makes it an atmosphere enfolding everything; but at times his skill in words concentrates itself in a sentence or phrase, or even in a word.